The author replies to Raskin’s ‘Rag Blog’ review of ‘All-American Rebels.’
[The following is a response to Jonah Raskin’s August 18, 2020 Rag Blog review of Bob Cottrell’s latest book, All-American Rebels: The American Left from the Wobblies to Today. Read Raskin’s review here.]
I admire Professor Jonah Raskin’s work, especially his studies of Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. I also appreciate the seriousness with which he tackles my new book, All-American Rebels: The American Left from the Wobblies to Today. I appreciate the blurb he offered for it: “Essential reading for those who participated in the struggles for equality and justice, and for those who are eager to learn about the history that has often been whitewashed from the official story.” The longer blurb he offered was still more complimentary, but my publisher opted to condense it.
Perhaps Professor Raskin has had a change a heart. While writing, “There’s hardly an important rebel who isn’t mentioned in passing in the pages of Cottrell’s book,” he points to a sin of commission on my part. That involves an inexplicable failure, notwithstanding numerous reads on my part, to list Huey Newton (whom I taught about for forty years), rather than Eldridge Cleaver, as a Black Panther co-founder. Professor Raskin also notes a sin of omission, the leaving out of Allen Young of the Gay Liberation Front. Unfortunately, these are probably not the only acts of commission and omission in a work as synthetic as this one, operating under the word count limitation I was handed.
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